Stupefy: Hit Movies Are Still Fun

Hit Movies Are Still Fun

Not everything has to suck this summer.

Yes, almost all the things that make life worth living have been taken away from us during the season we need them most.

Like going to the movies, one of the good things a person can do.

But even though we're theaterless, hit movies still exist and they provide desperately needed moments of communal if isolated fun in a summer that otherwise has virtually no shared experiences.

Last week, both Hulu and Netflix teased viewership numbers on the three streaming movies that have most closely approximated the summer blockbuster during this summer without movie theaters.

Last Weednesday, Netflix revealed that “Extraction,” released on April 24, is the most popular Netflix Original of all time, with 99 million views.

Last Friday, the company announced that “The Old Guard,” released only two weeks ago on Netflix, is already on pace to 72 million views in its first four weeks.

And also last week, someone at Hulu told a movie blog that “Palm Springs,” released the same weekend as “The Old Guard” but on Hulu, supposedly “broke the streaming platform’s opening weekend record by netting more hours watched over its first three days than any other film on Hulu during the same period,” according to this “Hulu insider.”

These hit streaming movies felt like summer blockbusters because they felt like big opening weekends, events people were talking about and doing simultaneously in a summer with so few of them.

But they aren’t real blockbusters. Netflix’s numbers are shady. They define a view as something that was watched for at least two minutes. And Hulu’s reporting is laughably unspecific, providing no viewership numbers despite obviously having the data. Both are probably withholding complete views because it would sound underwhelming.

But “Extraction,” “The Old Guard” and “Palm Springs” were hits, just streaming movie hits. The streaming movie hit has a different vibe than the theatrical movie hit.

Unlike “Marriage Story” and “The Irishman,” both of which are theatrical movies that were put on streaming after the fact, the streaming movie is uncanny, strangely familiar but not quite the thing you think you’re seeing, not quite a movie but also not a non-movie.

“Extraction” is Bourne but also “The Raid.” “The Old Guard” is pulpy like “Blade” but also self-serious like “Zero Dark Thirty.” “Palm Springs” doesn’t even bother pretending it hasn’t been done a million different ways before.

But most importantly a streaming movie hit is fun. That fun comes just as much from talking about the movie and taking part in the thing everyone is talking about as it does from what’s on screen. These three movies, especially “Palm Springs,” saved the summer for a couple hours.

The shorter stuff

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Hillary Clinton sex scenes are coming to Hulu. (Daily Mail)

Chance The Rapper endorsed Kanye for president last week or 10,000 Kanye news cycles ago, so here's David Remnick helpfully trying to make sense of where's he's coming from politically. (TNY)

Kanye's yes-men at the moment include a music supervisor for an anti-abortion movie and a guy whose five children are in a "wholesome and uplifting young adult" acoustic band. (Vulture)

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This wild story about the fall of the CEO of Coach and Kate Spade includes appearances from Graydon Carter's Air Mail and the late NoHo Star restaurant. (ProPublica)

Ryan Lizza's survey about cancel culture is frustratingly inconclusive and anticlimactic but does at least include an insane amount of raw data that's very fun to look through. (Politico)

Major League Baseball games will have "crowd reactions captured for the videogame 'MLB The Show' replacing real-life sounds." (WSJ)

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I will not be accepting Hillary Clinton's invitation to a Zoom with Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Instagram)

Bret Easton Ellis definitely knows that he ripped off the title of his new journalist TV show from James Ellroy. (THR)

From this very goodt piece on how TV is killing its own biggest moneymaker, cable: "Advertisers still need to advertise! Do you want to put yourself in the place that newspapers found themselves, with no advertising and hardly any subscribers?" (Variety)